Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Thanks Ct0517 & BdP! I am wondering that the conceptually very similar London air bearing arm was "built for London" cartridges... (based on the Cartridge Mans's Conductor arm) - it must have functionally similar unscreened wiring, at least these four "naked" unscreened (or five!) wires without screen for about 15cms.
Could it be that it has something to do with a missing ground link from the arm to the preamp - does the original ET2 wiring have a 5th wire? Mine certainly does, but I use a different wiring & routing to the original one.

Pegasus
I may have missed it, but have you made twisted pairs with your naked wire runs?

Cheers

One aspect of the London/Decca cartridge design that influences arm choice is the differing lateral vs. vertical compliance figures, they being 10 X 10 (-6) cm/dyne Vertical and 15 Lateral. I know the ET arm has differing moving mass figures in the two planes, but whether or not they align (or conflict) with the London compliance figures I don't know. Whatever arm is used with London's, it has to have as stiff and non-resonant an arm tube as possible, and the best bearings one can afford. That benefits all cartridges of course, but London's put a LOT of energy into the arm.

Another thing to know about the cartridge is that it likes to be loaded with unique amounts of resistance and capacitance. The Reference model is at it's best with 15k resistance and about 220 pF capacitance. I was tutored in Decca's in the 80's by Harvey Rosenberg, and he liked the Decca's of that time with a LOT of capacitance, like 0.5 mF!

Oops, one other thing: London's put out not only a lot of mechanical energy, but electrical as well---5mV! You will need a phono stage with a pretty high overload margin, and lower than average gain, about 40dB being a good figure.

Richard
Yes i have two twisted silver wires running left and right of the tonearm. They are mounted to the tube via three very small pieces of double sided adhesive foam strips, to hold the wires and prevent them from touching the metal arm tube. They "exit" the arm connection bending a bit up and then down in a wide radius to the plinth, where they are supported again with an adhesive foam pad. And there is a separate ground wire to one of the arm screws.
With careful wiring dressing the arm is completely free in movement, and very sensitive to the smallest lateral imbalances, as it should be.